


Like a Stone

by Miss_Apocalypto



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Complicated Relationships, F/M, Gen, Redemption, Trust, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 07:05:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18615598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Apocalypto/pseuds/Miss_Apocalypto
Summary: Just some bits and pieces of a short fic I was going to write for Illidan set during the Legion expansion. It's not finished, but this piece can stand as a one-shot. Might post more. But this is just a conversation between Illidan and my character, a draenei shaman named Nyella. It sort of gives a personal reason for Illidan to leave one of his deathbed messages for her.





	Like a Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Just a note to clear up some things since this was a scene from an unfinished work...
> 
> This takes place after the Vindicaar is up and running over Argus. The leaders of each of the Order Halls have just had a little war counsel on the ship to discuss their next move to gain a foothold on the broken planet's surface and take more ground from the Legion. Illidan had suggestions that the Highlord wasn't impressed with. There was an argument. Nyella, my shaman Farseer, defended him and came up with a more reasonable compromise. This scene happens right after the counsel is adjourned. Others are making preparations to land planetside while Illidan waits.
> 
> Io'Nali was supposed to be another love interest for Illidan. A "learn to love again and move on from this seriously unhealthy infatuation you have with a woman who not only doesn't reciprocate your feelings but is married to your brother" sort of thing. She's a druid who had grown up with the three of them and has always been there, knows him, and understands why he did the things he did even if she didn't agree with it. Sort of the one person who didn't just write him off as a power-hungry asshat when everyone else did--though he seriously tested even her compassion many a time. She's mostly just referenced in this bit. She's technically there, but doesn't participate in the conversation as she's talking to someone else on the Vindicaar.
> 
> Also, I try to be lore friendly, but some lore, especially that concerning the draenei, is a bit dodgy sometimes. So I took liberties. This assumes that the sabotage the blood elves performed on the Exodar did not immediately crash them into the face of the Azuremyst Islands. It took some time.

It was a stone. A jagged hunk of rock, black and serrated and shining like glass. The teeth of the thing pressed pin pricks into his lavender skin almost as if the unassuming, palm-sized token was alive and trying to free itself from his grip. And it hummed with power. Raw and roiling and bubbling like a volcano in the cradle of his hand; dangerous and beautiful and wild like the shaman who had handed it to him. He wasn’t sure, exactly, what he had been given. His knowledge of shamanism extended only as far as what he was able to glean from Akama’s practice in Outland, but that was a lifetime ago and he had harbored little interest for a magic that he had previously believed inferior. In Nyella’s hands, the elements seemed far more potent, so he regarded the shard of obsidian in his possession with a quizzical brow.

“It’s my first totemic bond to Azeroth,” the Farseer supplied without prompting.

It hadn’t occurred to him that such a thing was necessary for shamans, but it made obvious sense when he thought about it. “Why give it to me?” he asked dubiously, “I have no use for it.”

Nyella’s weight shifted over her cloven hooves, but she did not otherwise seem perturbed by his words. Her patience seemed endless in that moment; steady like the earth. “You are quite resourceful, Illidan, but even you would struggle to make much of something so—inaccessible—to you,” she replied.

“Then why give it to me?” he repeated.

She did not answer him immediately. Instead the Farseer seemed to be looking as distantly as her title suggested across the ruined face of Argus. “The Void is vast and deep and endless and filled with too much and not enough all at once. Everything spread out so far apart it feels stretched and distant and unreachable,” she paused and glanced sideways at him. “I was very weak on the ship when we fled Draenor,” she admitted, “Out of my element, as it were.”

She smiled at her own joke, but Illidan was finding it difficult to imagine the draenei as a weakened young refugee huddled with other survivors in the bowels of the Exodar. Yet, she _had_ been. It was a truth as much a part of her as the delicate vestiges of his own past that seemed strange and foreign even to himself, now, were a part of him. As if it were a life lived by another in an age distant and dancing on the edge of oblivion, waiting for time to blink and forget any of it had ever happened. That the great Illidan Stormrage had once been a child who was born and loved and raised—who had been innocent and full of so much hope and ambition—who had only wanted to be loved—who had tried so hard and failed so many people so many times in so many ways. Yes, Illidan remembered what it felt like to be weak, and it haunted his thoughts like a phantom, whispering apocalyptic promises in his ear. It was part of what drove him against the Legion. That and Tyrande—and Io’nali.

As the thought of her flit through his mind, he glanced back over his shoulder in Io’s direction, she was still in deep conversation with one of her druids, but she was glancing at him somewhat impatiently. She didn’t like leaving him unattended for too long. _Just in case._ Just in case he said the wrong thing and threatened the already tenuous alliance brokered between the Demon Hunters and the rest of Azeroth. She needn’t have worried while he was in the company of the Farseer. Nyella treated him kinder than any of the others and never seemed put off or distrustful of him—as far as he could tell, at least. She was difficult to read sometimes. Like now, when she was obviously taking her time in answering his simple question to what end, he could not fathom. “Did your pet rock keep you company, then? Comfort you?” he asked dryly and, to his surprise, Nyella snorted softly before recovering.

“Not quite,” she continued, chuckling, “But, my power comes from the earth, the sea, the sky, and the fiery core—the empty, silent, hopelessness of the Void held none of these things. I was cut off, broken, lonely for the voices of the land. And it was so silent…” Her brow furrowed delicately beneath the hard curve of her horns. “Crashing into the rocky face of Azeroth in a blazing, fiery heap was the first charge of elemental power I had felt during the journey…” She inhaled sharply as if the memory was equal parts painful and intoxicating. “And it came at the price of destruction, of pain, suffering, and fear. We lost many in the crash and scarred the Azuremyst Islands forever.”

“Your people survived. That is something.” It was odd, for the both of them, to hear words that could pass for a comfort leave his mouth.

Nyella quirked an eyebrow at him and nodded. “Indeed,” she agreed, sounding amused, “Survival is no small thing in the face of such odds. Then. And now.”

Illidan looked at the rock in his hand again. “Is that what this is, then? A reminder of what we are fighting for? You waste your time. I can never forget. The very vision of it burned my eyes from my skull.”

“No,” Nyella denied, “Not of what we fight for. You know better than most what the Legion is capable of and I wouldn’t insult your sacrifices by offering you a rock and telling you a story of my struggles as if it could compare to the millennia of turmoil you have suffered.”

“Then get to the point, Farseer.”

“So impatient.”

“My patience is infinite, but the Legion will be upon us before you’ve finished your tale.”

“It’s the first thing I loved about Azeroth,” Nyella replied, “Through that, my soul touched that of the world and I was able to hold its fiery heart in my hand, pull lightning from its skies, reshape its mountains, and redirect its rivers.” She tore her gaze away from Argus again to look at him, her glowing eyes, unflinching, “It was home when I had none. I crawled out of the wreckage of the Exodar, bleeding, searching for loved ones—aimless—still disconnected, but I could feel the power around me, throbbing like a heartbeat—alien—and that small piece of obsidian gave me strength. Hope. Home. A new beginning. I wasn’t alone, anymore. I was connected to something greater.” She turned to face him fully, standing as tall as she was able which was just shy of his own height. “It gave me purpose. I give it now to you as a promise that despite whatever nonsense and bickering happens at that wartable, or any other, I will not let the Legion take another home from me. You are not alone in this fight anymore, Illidan. It does not rest upon only your shoulders. I am the blade and shield and rumbling thunder of Azeroth and it’s time for you to trust me.”

Illidan’s hand clenched around the serrated stone in his hand so hard, he felt the teeth of it slice through his skin. It felt right for his blood to slick its hard, glassy surface, for his pain—however small the laceration was—to intermingle with the symbol of her salvation like it could save him, too. As if her new beginning could also be his. That the rock caged between his fingers was the same fiery heart that the shaman had needed to sustain her. But he knew that could never be. Not really. The eternal weight of his sins, numerous and profane, was too heavy to balance on the cutting edge of the obsidian totem.

Her words were a tremendous and unexpected relief, however. Coming from anyone else, he would have doubted their sincerity, but from her—it _was_ like thunder: just the echoing announcement of something that had already taken place. He already trusted her. More than the others and in her hands, he was willing to place so much because she was able to carry it—perhaps in ways he was never able to. He had done everything in his power to secure a future for Azeroth, but he knew in that inexplicable way that he would not live to see it and that it would be up to warriors like Nyella to shape what he had safeguarded for so long. And that was—okay. That was right. That was the way things were supposed to be, somehow. “I will not forget this, Farseer,” he said softly and she almost smiled at him.

“I’m about to follow you into hell, Illidan,” she replied, “I’m glad we understand each other.” To his surprise, so was he.


End file.
